April, 2011:

So off to ‘The Jungle’ we went (OK, so I know it’s not called ‘The Jungle’ anymore, but the name has stuck with me!) full of positive thoughts & feelings of optimism after a brilliant Easter & the news that Jamie Peacock would be making a return after 8 months out of the game. I’m not sure what it is but it just feels different some how, like we’ve turned a corner in the season (I just hope this is true)

Stood on the 40 Yard line amongst a majority of Leeds fans, we awaited the game to kick off. For most of the 1st half, I have to say, it felt like we were just watching one half of the pitch, unfortunatley the wrong half…It just felt like I’d been facing right, which must have meant the Tigers had most of the posession. We scored after 1 & a half minutes, but then proceeded to defend our line for what felt like forever.

Castleford had 2 tries disallowed which could have changed the game, but unfortunatley, you may think I’m biased, I do think the referee got the decisions correct…they were forward. Some brilliant defending was on show, not least an awesome one man tackle from Kevin Sinfield to hold them up over the line, and I have to say, the want & team spirit, was excellent to see. To see Keith Senior run the width of the pitch just to Hi-5 Sinny for the tackle, made me feel…We’re Back!

So today has got the be made up of the weirdest selection of activities, a day which was meant to consist of shopping & lunch out followed by some rugby, was overtaken by some wedding. That’s right, from the moment I got up & switched on ITV, I was just totally hooked on the Royal Wedding. Now I’m not a total royalist & thought that I was only bothered about seeing what Kate was wearing, but I was wrong. Seeing all the royals & Kate’s family, one by one arriving at Westminster Abbey (which I visited last November) made me actually wish I’d had a party or, in fact, gone & lined the street with all the other mad ‘eds…It would have been awesome!!

Although I have to say, sitting in my PJ’s wrapped in a blanket with a cup of tea, with Philip Schofield talking to me from the TV, has got to be a close second. It’s been such an amazing thing to watch & I’m so glad I am not like my husband, who is currently boarding out the loft 🙂 & to top it all off, they have just sang Jerusalem, a hymn that sends shivers down my spine due to the memories of rugby league games gone by, which leads me, quite nicely, to the next part of my day.

In Excel 2007 there is an option to use icons in conditional formatting…For example, Up, Down & No Change arrows, which are fed by a number, 0, 1 or 2 in the same cell. I needed to show these arrows on scorecard I was designing but there was an issue with the size of my column & where the arrows were sitting:

I wanted the arrows to appear in the middle of the cell & the numbers not to be there. My initial thought was to just change the font colour of the cell, but this still showed the same information (although hidden) & the arrows stayed where they were. Then I found a setting which means you can just ‘Show Icons Only’…

I spend most of my day at work returning values from one worksheet to another or one list to another, for example, matching a customer name to a customer number. This can be done by using a combination of the INDEX & MATCH functions (see example below)

Walking up the Headingley on a glorious Easter Monday, is one of my favorite places to be. With the thoughts that Danny McGuire may be making a comeback after 7 months, just gave us a skip in our step. It felt like it would give the team such a lift & it really did, as soon as his name was mentioned in the line up, everyone seemed so excited.

I couldn’t help but think back to that day where he injured his knee & Phil Clarke from the Sky Sports team made the stupid comments about him maybe deserving his injury due to him cheating, then I saw a tweet from someone I follow which said ‘Loving that the Rugby League Gods timed Danny McGuire’s ‘resurrection’ for Easter weekend. Spooky’, which just made me chuckle.

The game itself was exciting for the most part, with some good plays from both sides. Leeds enjoyed most of the possession, however, there was a noticeable tiredness towards the end of the game, which was inevitable due to 2 games in 5 days. We couldn’t have asked for anymore from the lads, 2 wins in 2 over the Easter weekend, now to Castleford, which will be tough. Another local derby against a team that are 2 points & 2 places above us in the table & a game that will no doubt end in abuse from my cousin who is a massive Castleford fan :s

P.S. I can’t talk about the game on Easter Monday, without mentioning the pre-match entertainment, ‘Fake That’, who got me really excited about seeing the real thing in June…Not long now 🙂

From the moment the pre-match band played ‘Tonight’s gonna be a good night’ at Odsal on Thursday evening, it felt like some kind of omen, strangely gave me a little bit of hope for the game to come. It was a must win game for the Leeds Rhinos & you could feel the tension…which at Odsal it quite difficult (I always think the sound & atmosphere gets lost in such a big space, but this time was different)

After the 1st 10 minutes, I thought my hope had been dashed as Luke Burgess had given away 2 penalties & the Bulls had scored from them with ease. It wasn’t looking good…We had to wait until the 25th minute before the game took a turn for the better, with Bradford having a try disallowed & Leeds going
down the other end & scoring. With another score just before half time, going in 2 points down seemed a good thing after the disappointing start.

The whole game seemed decidedly slow, not sure if this had anything to do with the distance we were away from the game or whether that what was actually happening. Plays seemed slow, tackling seemed slack, but we still had another half to go to improve on things.

The 2nd alf was a lot of to-ing & fro-ing Bradford scored early on, Leeds switched the luck but scoring back to back tries within 2 minutes, then 10 minutes later Bradford were in again. Then with 3 minutes left on the clock, Danny Buderus went over for what was the winning try.

It wasn’t a pretty win, but a win’s a win & it definitely felt like we had got the ball rolling, plus with the rumours on twitter that Danny McGuire was returning on Easter Monday, it returned my hope to its rightful place 🙂

Recently I had to have my laptop stripped back & restored due to iTunes messing with my head (long story) and my personal IT Helpdesk had a problem with the back up of my iTunes library. Now you may or may not know this about me, but I have a hatred for an untidy iTunes library, so hours & hours have been spent putting them in order, as to how I like them, so this caused me a slight panic. You may go as far as to say I have an OCD about it.

Now as Mike had done all the hard work I thought it only fair that I take on some of the work & see if I could recover a previous backup I had made. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds…due to the complete restore of my laptop, it would not recognise that the backups were done from this laptop, so this added an extra complication…well, for a novice like me anyways…so I thought I’d write some instructions in case anyone else needed to know how to do it 🙂

Next up for the Leeds Rhinos is our local rivals Bradford Bulls on what has become a traditional Easter Thursday fixture. With the Bulls lying a point and 3 places behind us, it has quickly become a ‘must win’ game for us. Now, I don’t like playing Bradford at the best of times, however, now it’s even more important it’s even worse. The nerves will be definitely kicking in come 5 o’clock on Thursday.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse in the club, I read this post today which worries me slightly. I know it’s natural for a coach to back up his players when they are up for a disciplinary but this seems a little strange. Now, having not seen the entire incident, I did see on a replay, Ryan Bailey hit a Huddersfield player outside of the tackle area, it was seemed an unprovoked attack, so he should be punished. For McDermott to back him so completely is worrying to me, I would much rather he stick to coaching the team than coming out to the press, but to also moan at the opponents tactics, seems silly. We have seen so many coaches in trouble for doing a similar thing.

I’m hoping that this is only a blip & we’ll come back fighting on Thursday, but with Bailey banned for a match for the incident, still a number of injuries & moral at, what seems to be, an all time low, who knows what might happen. Maybe we should take Kevin Sinfield’s advice and get right behind the team as usual.

So after the rugby league marathon I went through last weekend which ended with Leeds Rhinos losing at away at Hull KR, I thought this weekend would have more to offer for me. I actually live in Hull (so you can imagine what this week was like at work) so getting from Hull to Leeds itself is a bit of a nightmare, with a husband who works for a newspaper, getting away before a deadline is due is pretty hit & miss, but we always make the trip, rush or no rush, although this week it felt like I wasn’t rewarded for my effort.

Yesterday we had in tow, Mike Hudson, who was going to only his 4th game ever (Is he the bad luck charm?) Somehow I’ve managed to turn him into a Rhinos fan & with the season that we’re currently having, that some mean feat (Might have something to do with the free tickets I keep giving him). He says it’s fine, it helps him learn about the bad plays as well as the good plays, ever the optimist.
Unfortunately the rest of my family, which consists of my mum, dad & husband, do not share the ‘new supporter’ optimism, we’ve been there too many times to think this is OK.

Last night was one of the worst performances I’ve seen in a long time, which with a new coaching staff & supposedly new start, it very worrying. Tackling was slack, plays were not thought through & there does not seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel. Put that with players who seemingly don’t look like they care (I hope to god this is not true) & pathetic brawls for no reason, it’s really not helping matters.